The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

The Remnant has many dear old friends: Yuval Levin is the best-looking; Chris Stirewalt is the best kisser. But the oldest, going back to Episode 1, is Ben Sasse. Ben joins today’s pod for a conversation that traverses the high and the low, the sacred and the profane, starting with Gilligan’s Island and running through the healthcare system, scientific research, morphine, affluenza, being an adult, the effects of different media on our brains, screens, schools, the need for strong institutions, good and bad parenting, primaries, AI and work, and Senate reform.

Show Notes:

—Not Dead Yet podcast

—Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

—The Dispatch editors: “The Coming Post-Trump Reality”

—Jonah’s 9/11 G-File

—Napoleon III Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
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Coming off of a discussion about 9/11 on the DisPod, Jonah Goldberg is feeling ruminative and somber. Accordingly, he has decided to address one of the most important foreign policy issues of our century: the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. That’s right. Freedom fries forever, baby. And if that’s not exciting enough, The Dispatch’s legendary Francophobe-in-chief doesn’t stop there, taking up the Texas Trumpapalooza, the Media Research Center, Abdul El-Sayed, pinkwashing, the Muslim-Queer alliance, progressive Jews, Justice Antonin Scalia’s brilliant take on the Constitution, lawless e-bikes, and video podcasting.

Show Notes:

—DisPod on the 9/11 anniversary

—Chris Stirewalt Remnant

—Jonah’s LA Times column

—Jonah on NPR

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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Today a *very sober* Jonah Goldberg is joined by the *mostly sober* friend of the pod, pickled alligator aficionado, and notorious West Virginian Chris Stirewalt to talk about the midterms, the Alaska primary, GOP expectations, J.D. Vance’s presidential campaign, right-wing social engineering, the Trump midterm convention, postliberal eggheads, post-Americanism, free money, America’s dirtbag political ethos, and … America the Sandwich.

Show Notes:

—Jonah on NPR

—Jonah’s Los Angeles Times column

—NYT: “More Americans Are Identifying as Democrats Ahead of Midterms”

—Stirewalt: “Could Vance’s soccer mom bonus nudge married women back to the GOP?”

—The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition

—Jonah’s book: Suicide of the West

—The Dispatch Editors: “The Coming Post-Trump Reality”

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.

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Thought we’d forgotten about Venezuela here on The Remnant? Think again! As prone as Jonah Goldberg is to getting distracted by the finer things of life—Old English dialects, zombie movies, etc.—he’s kept a weather eye fixed southward on our Bolivarian neighbor. Jonah is joined today by James Story, the former ambassador to Venezuela, to take us deep into the recent history of U.S.-Venezuelan relations, Nicolás Maduro, Delcy Rodríguez, a possible democratic transition, the oil deal, the Venezuelan diaspora, Marco Rubio, the boat strikes, the professional foreign service post-DOGE, and Pax Americana.

Show Notes:

—The Dispatch: “The U.S. Boat Strikes, One Year Later”

—MS Now: “The U.S. drone strike in Venezuela marks a dangerous new era”

—Jonah’s LA Times column on the oil deal

—Anthony Scaramucci Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peacefully anchored on the Potomac, the HMS Remnant rocks gently from side to side. Captain Jonah Goldberg, peg leg and all, stands at the prow gazing at the darkening horizon. To the west, the storm clouds of AI apocalypse are gathering. In the east, a midterm squall quickly bears down. In such portentous circumstances, there’s only one thing for a man to do.

Captain Jonah retires to his cabin, lights a cigar, pulls down his dusty copy of Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, and girds himself to talk about Gloria Steinem. Listen in as Jonah ruminates on Bill Buckley’s respectful listening, the freaky Hugging Face incident, Maria Bartiromo, the radicalization of the elderly, Albert Nock’s antisemitism, social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, blood libel vs. blood guilt, Marcionism, Fox News, J.D. Vance, pretextual moral outrage, and confusing conservatives for Republicans.

Show Notes:

—Kevin Williamson on Gloria Steinem in The Dispatch

—NYT’s The Daily on the Hugging Face hack

—Michael Wreszin: The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock

—G-File: “The Rocks and the Orgy”

—Jonah’s NR piece on Albert Nock

—John Carey: The Intellectuals and the Masses

—Thomas C. Leonard: Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era

—Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch: “J.D. and Tucker, Abdul and Hasan”

—Wednesday’s G-File

—Megan McArdle’s book

—Anthony Scaramucci Remnant

The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah’s twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices